Eastcourt
Independent School
English Writing
The power of effective writing is immense in that it allows us to properly communicate - to inform, persuade, convince, entertain and evoke emotions.
At Eastcourt, we develop our curriculum to enable children to express themselves clearly, fluently and creatively through writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Intent
Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum. By the end of Year Six we intend our children to have developed a love of writing and to be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. We set high expectations for all our children to take pride in their work and have a fluent, cursive handwriting style alongside allowing their imaginations to flourish.
Implementation
In order to help us to develop confident, enthusiastic writers who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and across a variety of contexts, our teaching of writing is often cross-curricular and linked to our class topics: this provides our children with regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Writing tasks are specific and meaningful, and often have the purpose to engage children and to illustrate how their writing skills can be applied to real life contexts.
We use The Write Stuff as our core teaching method. Each unit begins with a series of lessons combining experience days and sentence stacking – building vocabulary and different sentence structures.
Each child has a book devoted to writing development – this book contains one piece of independent work after each unit and uses the approach advocated by Jane Considine.
Impact
Pupils will make good progress from their own personal starting points. By the end of Year Six they will be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Our pupils will acquire a wide vocabulary and have a strong command of the written word. Most importantly, they will develop a love of writing and be well equipped for the rest of their education.
